Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu Love! – 12 (Fin)

Binan Koukou comes to a fantastic close, totally “More Better” than I ever could have expected. While not a 10, the last episode captures all the wonderfulness that made this my favorite series of winter season.

From its double-down on the Absurd Aliens Vs. Sailor Boys plot, to the boys’ continued embarrassment about following anime tropes, to the anime final episode conventions the episode does follow and the ones it makes fun of not following, everything is here.

As I suspected, Binan High School’s students are unwitting participants in alien TV programming. It isn’t even a good show by alien standards, which explains all the conventional story telling elements and cheap production values the Battle Lovers have seen along the way.

However, the double wrinkle is that this is a sequel…

Yumoto’s firewood chopping brother was Earth’s hero in the original series, which actually caused that show to be canceled because, from the Alien’s perspective, he was the villain their invasion force was supposed to defeat. Since he always won, the show lost its focus and then its ratings.

It was great watching the Battle Lovers just gape as the reveal is dumped on them. The student council too, which is horrified to realize how empty their domination plot is, and how embarrassing “being the popular tsundere” is to the president…

Leading us to the next story convention, Yumoto’s Bro becomes the near final boss and can not be defeated until the Battle Lovers upgrade their abilities to “More Better” levels, which they find eye rolling as usual.

And of course the show’s director is the final boss, complete with a giant purple space mech which requires former-enemies to join forces, all Much Better Better come together and More Battle Love Shower for the victory.

My only criticism is that Binan Koukou stays so true to the format it’s making fun of, parts of the episode dragged. The jokes were well timed and well played and the action was surprisingly fun too. But lengthy info dumping between action is what it is, even if its bad pacing is the point.

Binan Koukou earned my respect by taking itself seriously (in that it wasn’t very serious) to the end. The boy’s personalities had a wonderfully believable response to the silliness around them, including the obvious BL nods.

If you missed it, I’m not going to tell you to dig back and find this one. It’s not on the level of Gekkan-shoujo-Nozaki-kun or Sabagebu but it showed how far a simple idea could be taken without wearing out its welcome.